Logs:Dragonriders Don't Marry
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| RL Date: 27 June, 2011 |
| Who: Jaques, Iolene |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Iolene traipses up the cliff to try and catch a little bit of nostalgia. Jaques joins. She tries to make him smile. He seems eternally mopey. |
| Where: Diving Cliff, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 24, Month 1, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
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| As time's gone by, Iolene's dutifully donned on a pair of boots, her once hardened feet getting softer with each usage, until now, it's almost a requirement and forgetting draws out painfully cold blisters. So there she stands, alone with fur-trimmed boots a few sizes too large, a heavy, if slightly threadbare coat, a thick woolen scarf, and a woolly hat with one of those puffy tassles on the end. She stands in front of the lake, a top that cliff used for diving in the summer and looks out upon the lake and the Weyr around her. About her, a light precipitation falls, dusting her hair in the sparkling diamonds of melting snow. Jaques, in much the same condition, always looks a little out of sorts when he has to wrap his outsized coat around him; but a night like this, he keeps it wrapped tight around him as he ventures out around the lake and toward the cliffs in roundabout fashion. The climb's treacherous in winter, but he makes it up all right, boots crunching in the snow until he reaches the top and stops, just at the end of the stairs and well back from Iolene still. Still believing she's alone, Iolene continues to take in the view from up here, twirling on the heel of her boots, her weight shifting as she does so, and her lifted chin takes in the icily crisp winter air. Her arms spread and the heavy sleeves of her coat hang like wings about her lanky frame. It's on the second whirl that she spies Jaques and an unbidden smile emerges as that twirl comes to a quick, toed stop. Her arms are still stretched about her sides and she splays her fingers apart, welcoming. "It reminds me of home up here. I can almost forget that we aren't there." "Don't fall," Jaques says idly; he doesn't really think she will, although he walks on out on the ledge anyway. A glance down at the water far below has him keeping firmly in the middle of the cliff, though. "Can you?" he asks them, lifting his brows; he's watching her rather than looking out himself to see if he can find what she does in the landscape. Jaques' reaction diminishes her momentary joy, causing the smile to falter and those dark blue eyes to shadow. "Well, no. Not really, but it's nice to fantasize for a few moments. Pretend to forget even if you really can't." Slowly, she completes her turn, so the pair are looking out at the same view. For Iolene, there's the dark shadows of the far cliffs that border the lake, and the glimmering ice below with only the faintest, clouded moonlight casting its luminescent glow upon winter. "Close your eyes," she urges, "Slow your breathing. Think about your happiest moment in the winter. Like a time you were happy even if your belly wasn't full." The girl's eyes disappear as she follows her own advice, slipping open only once she's finished speaking to peek over at Jaques sidelong. "I'm sorry," Jaques says when Iolene's happiness dims. Contritely, he looks away at the water again, and the lights in the distance, but her request has his eyes drawing back to her again. He hesitates but then closes them. "All right," he says, relaxing his shoulders, his stance, by slow degrees. He keeps his closed for a moment, though despite the request for the happy memory, his brows knit up a few moments later at something perhaps not so carefree. Peeking allows her to watch the consternation that knits his brows and gives her reason to steal up by Jaques, placing two hands on one of his shoulders. Shorter, only by inches, she rests her chin against her hands there and looks up. "Nothing?" Her chide is low, though her hands are reassuring in the light squeeze, "Surely, Jaques, son of Cason, there's something you remember that was remotely happy. I can remember a lot of things that were happy. When I didn't know better not to be." Jaques's dark eyes flick open at that, and he gives her a rueful smile. "I remember a lot of things that were happy," he tells her. "But I can't separate them from the things that aren't," which is a lot, lately. "I'm glad, though, if you can." In Iolene's eyes is the momentary indecision of whether or not to be wounded as she stands on a precipice not only physical: but the divide between her old life and her new. Her old self and her now self. In concordance with the night, however, a surge of the island's Io emerges and the chin on her hands lift, and the hands on his shoulders depart, only to wrap about Jaques in an impulsive and fierce hug. A hug where her face buries into the side of his arm. "See, now that's a new happy memory," is what she says, when she pulls away, face lifted in a sparkling sort of smile. "Distinct. Apart. With nothing sad to taint it." "I'm sure I can find something, if I work at it," but Jaques is mostly teasing, too, with a gentle tug at Iolene's blonde hair too before his arms slide around her as well. He's quiet for several long moments; then, "I talked to Da the other day." Her request of, "Wait. Don't say anything yet," comes quickly on the heels of Jaques' mention of his father and hoping he'll acquiesce, Iolene takes the opportunity to give him another hug before taking a very deliberate step back. Compartmentalization at its best. The smile, now touched sad, as if readying for what he might say, still creases her face as she notes, "Remember. Distinct." Then; "Now. What did you two talk about?" For another moment, Jaques is quiet, and when she steps back, his smile is--just for a moment--more bemused than the resigned it shortly drifts into. He half-turns, too, to purse his lips at the far side of the bowl. "What are we going to do here. What am I going to do here." "What are you going to do here?" Though the return of sober conversations could mean the extinguishing of Iolene's joy, tonight, the girl makes concentrated efforts to not let the all too typical frown from pulling at her lips. Her voice remains light. Her expression remains clear, and those dark eyes study Jaques intently. "What do you want to do?" The way she poses the questions in succession indicates in the nuance of timbre, that she might believe there are two separate answers between duty and desire. "I haven't decided," Jaques admits with a faint lift of his shoulders. The two answers do seem to overlap in that much, at least. He slides a glance over at her. "You?" "I want-," Iolene takes in an audible breath, whose release is slow, quietly paced. Ultimately, her answer brings a low blush to her cheeks that could entirely be the fault of the winter air. "I want to get married." Jaques lifts his brows; and if there's another bemused smile hovering about his mouth, well. His mouh always looks kind of like that, really. "Does he know yet?" he asks. "No. Yes. No. I don't think so." It's all terribly confusing and Iolene can't seem to make up her mind as to what the answer is. "It doesn't matter anyway." Jaques, in return, just looks at her, because it does seem to matter and he is very good at waiting. For once, Iolene has no words to share, instead slipping an arm companionably around Jaques'. It'd be picturesque with the snow falling about them and her golden hair leaned into his shoulder: except he's the wrong guy and she's the wrong girl. The silence stretches out, more companionable than anything else; it's a few minutes at least before Jaques sees to break it. "Da suggested maybe seeing about this hatching they're going to have. It's something to do." While they're silent, Iolene keeps busy, if only to stick her tongue out and try and catch a few of those flakes. But then he speaks, and she stills abruptly, tongue half-poking out of her mouth. "Mmmm," is her guttural response, while her tongue retreats. "I don't understand enough of it to know why we would." Perhaps she's had one too many sips of Devaki's kool-aid. "We have rights outside of what the Weyr gives us. Mostly," and here she pauses, thinking hard enough that her brow furrows intently, "I don't really understand how it all works. I've asked. But I still don't understand it. Voices in your head? Sharing yourself with some other... entity?" Jaques, without any concept of pets, settles for, "They think, they act, they're somehow independent. But in the end, it all comes back to they can't live without you. Like children." He, again, falls silent for a moment, slanting a look at her again. Of standing, "It's stalling, mostly, I suppose." Iolene tugs a bit at his arm and repositions herself to get more comfortable clinging to him. "What are -you- stalling for?" You. Not Cason. There's the most subtle emphasis on the pronoun. "For?" That seems to surprise Jaques, who lifts his arm a little to let her rearrange it as she will, while he watches. "More against. It's... something to fall into, not to choose." "You should choose," says Iolene, the girl's advice tripping innocently off her snowflake seeking tongue. A few more are caught and drawn in, savored for the little flavor of childhood they carry. "You'll feel better about yourself if you choose to do this, rather than fall into it to not choose." A beat passes and the darker lashes that frame her face are thrown to look up at the moon shrouded by snow clouds. She must know something of his indecision, for her next, "Dragonriders don't marry," is a lot quieter. That brings a stillness to Jaques, more unnatural than the easy sort of comraderie. This bit is news, it seems, and he hesitates a moment before noting, "I didn't realize you were quite so eager for it," like they had just been talking about her. "I don't even have a husband ready," replies Iolene, a sudden smile adding a levity that's layered with false optimism to her voice. She'll let it slide, his displacement of the conversation's train of thought back onto her. "It's getting cold. Let's walk- back." The hitch, that small pause -- it might be replacing home with a more neutral, less loaded word. Maybe. |
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